Unaware of the dangers on Lake Tahoe, a new resident finds herself in a dire situation after trying to paddle across windswept open water

Far from shore on a windy afternoon, Janelle Hibler was paddling toward Speedboat Beach after a fun visit to the Hyatt when a large wave slammed into her kayak, tossing her into the frigid water of Lake Tahoe. 

No big deal, she thought: “I’ll just climb right back in.”

She tried to lift herself out of the water and into the vessel, but she could not. She tried again. Then again, and again.  

“I legitimately couldn’t drag myself back into my kayak,” she says. “Each time I tried, the waves would crash into me, toppling me back over.”

Hours passed as Janelle clung to the side of her kayak, screaming at passing boats, praying that someone would hear her desperate pleas and come to her rescue. To no avail. 

She remembers the feeling of “absolute panic” when the sun disappeared behind the horizon, then wonder as she watched the full moon rise slowly over the lake.  

As she drifted in and out of consciousness, her kayak long gone as she bobbed in the open water, she felt a strange sense of peace. 

“The panic was subsiding,” she says. “I was just … floating, staring up at that full moon rising higher over the East Shore. I had been begging and pleading to my mom, to God, to the universe, to save me. 

“They must have heard me.” 

A Quintessential Tahoe Day 

It was June 2017, and Janelle had just moved to North Lake Tahoe from Ohio after her husband, who goes by “J.,” was hired as a dermatologist at a local practice. 

Soon after moving into their new home, the Hiblers bought what Janelle calls “The Tahoe Starter Kit,” complete with snowshoes, skis, stand-up paddleboards and kayaks. 

Admittedly, their ambitions exceeded their knowledge of Lake Tahoe and its potential hazards.   

Janelle and J. Hibler celebrate their fourth wedding anniversary with a tour of Thunderbird Lodge in September 2018, courtesy photo

“I don’t hail from the Great Lakes part of Ohio,” says Janelle. “My Ohio had shallow man-made lakes that you could almost stand up in. Nighttime boating, mostly to the bars dotted around the lake, was a commonplace summertime activity.”

The first outing on their new kayaks, the couple got a small taste of Tahoe’s volatile side when they encountered windy conditions on a return trip from Gar Woods in Carnelian Bay. But while paddling through the chop was a bit stressful, the couple didn’t think much of it. 

“We just looked at it as one of those crazy adventures we always have,” Janelle says. 

Her second outing was on July 8, 2017. J. was out of town at the Monterey Grand Prix as Janelle set out to enjoy what was a quintessential Tahoe day—sunny, warm, the feel of summer in the air.  

In no rush, Janelle spent the morning shopping in Kings Beach, buying souvenirs for friends back home and a pair of cutoff jean shorts at the thrift store. Then she loaded up her kayak, packed her purse with a water bottle, sun hat, sunscreen, button-up shirt and headphones and drove to Speedboat Beach.  

She spent the next hour or so paddling in calm waters around Crystal Bay and over to the Hyatt Regency Lake Tahoe in Incline Village, where she arrived to find a festive scene. She pulled her kayak onto the beach and joined the crowd. 

After enjoying a couple of drinks and socializing for a bit, she started to feel hungry and decided to head home. It was 4 p.m. when she hopped back in her kayak, donning nothing more than a bikini, her new jean shorts and Chaco sandals, and shoved off into a strong wind that had picked up that afternoon. 

“On the way home, I was paddling and thinking, ‘Do I want Mexican, sushi or pizza?’” Janelle recalls.  

Bliss to Panic

Longing for dinner and a shower, Janelle decided she’d take the most direct route home—a beeline straight across the heart of Crystal Bay. 

“The fateful decisions kept stacking up,” she admits, reflecting on the choices she made that would soon put her in peril.  

The farther Janelle paddled out, the more turbulent the lake became. The next thing she knew, she was splashing into the cold water of Lake Tahoe, unable to remount her kayak.

Between screams for help, Janelle tried to kick and pull her kayak toward the distant shore. But she only drifted farther from it. She tried to muscle her body out of the water and back into the kayak. But her efforts were fruitless against the combined power of the wind and water.  

“I finally accepted defeat and resolved to call 911 for help,” says Janelle. “I knew a water rescue would be costly, but it didn’t matter.”

Only she couldn’t find her phone. She tore through her bag, chucking her water bottle, sun hat, button-up shirt, purse—even her car keys—into the depths of Tahoe. Still, no phone. 

She managed to grab the used life jacket she had acquired the day before and put it on. Exhausted and battered, she let go of her kayak. 

After hours of battling against the waves and fading light, still hollering at every passing boat—“Why was no one hearing and coming to rescue me!?”—Janelle began to give up hope. 

Not a particularly religious person, she found herself fervently confessing every sin, asking for forgiveness, repeating the Lord’s Prayer. If this was it—and surely it was—she hoped and prayed it wasn’t too late to find religion and begged her mother, who had died five years earlier, to help save her.

At some point between the sun setting and the moon rising, “My brain was getting fuzzy,” Janelle says. “Coherent thoughts were fading. My praying to my dead mom and God became almost crazed.”

Serendipity 

Nick Wright, an athletic trainer living in the Sacramento area at the time, arrived in Crystal Bay that evening on vacation with his family, who rented a house just a few doors down from Janelle and J. 

On a whim, several members of the family decided to take advantage of the bright moonlight with a nighttime boat ride. 

“Mind you,” says Janelle, “this ain’t Ohio. Nighttime boating isn’t a thing on Tahoe. The mother and aunt of the family were strongly against it.”

Navigating Lake Tahoe by moonlight, the family noticed something on the water that they initially thought was a bird.  

“We thought that maybe it’d fly away as we approached it,” Wright recalls, “but the figure stayed in the water. And then when the boat was practically right on top of her, we realized it was a person. We looped back around, killed the engine, saw Janelle in the water and she said, ‘I need help, please.’” 

Wright’s wife, Heather, and his cousin reached down and grabbed Janelle—whose lips were blue—pulled her into the boat and immediately began warming her up with towels and blankets. 

In her semi-conscious state, she was still crying out for help.

“She was in the Crystal Bay area, really far from shore,” Wright says. “She was fully hypothermic but fairly coherent. She told us where her kayak was, told us to call her husband and gave us his phone number.”

Which was strange, says Janelle, because normally she would have had to look up the number. But on that night, and in her dire state, the digits were somehow seared into her memory.

“They found me around 9:30 p.m., after four-plus hours of floating in the deepest depths of Tahoe,” says Janelle. “I have flashes of memory from when our fates collided. Suddenly, I’m on a boat. Then, nothing. I’m trying to tell them about my kayak. Then, nothing. I’m being carried like a dead body, one person carrying my arms and another my legs. Then, nothing. I’m in a bed in a strange room in clothes not my own. Then, nothing.” 

Back at the rental house, the family got Janelle out of her wet clothes and made homemade heat packs to place on her pulse points.   

“We gave her some food but didn’t know where the nearest facility was to get her to,” says Wright. “I remember one emergency services number we called said it’d be at least a half hour to get there. So, we just concentrated on getting her body temperature up.” 

‘I’m Cold, I’m Cold, I’m Cold’

J. was at the racetrack in Monterey with a friend when he received a call from an unfamiliar number. He let it go to voicemail.

“But then they left a voicemail, and something told me to check it,” he recalls, pausing for a moment before continuing with a shaky voice. “The message said, ‘You don’t know me, but my name is Nick and we have your wife. She’s here in a boat and she’s really cold, but she’s warming up.’” 

J. was shocked and confused. A sense of dread washed over him. 

“I told my friend, ‘Something serious happened to Janelle and I have to go.’ I packed up and went really fast back to Tahoe,” says J. “Nick and I called each other every 15 minutes for updates. I asked Nick to put Janelle on the phone and she just kept saying, ‘I’m cold, I’m cold, I’m cold—on the kayak.’”

Janelle Hibler’s Strava activity documented the route of her July 8, 2017, kayak outing. After choosing an ill-fated direct route across Crystal Bay on her return trip, she capsized in rough conditions. The zig-zagging track in the middle of the bay captures hours spent fighting wind, waves and frigid water before being rescued

J. arrived in record time during the night to find his wife bundled up, slowly starting to come around under the care of strangers who had just saved her life. She could barely speak above a whisper after hours of screaming. She was dazed and beaten up. But she was alive. 

“It’s so hard to think about Janelle being gone and how very close she came,” says J., reflecting on the traumatic experience. “The image of her being out there, and after seeing her all bruised up from her hanging onto the kayak for so long, the kayak banging on her skin … that hits me so hard, thinking of her hanging on for dear life.”

When Janelle felt strong enough, she was brought out to the couch in the living room, where she noticed a pair of sandals drying by a fireplace that looked identical to her own. 

“Oddly, I would have sworn that I kicked them off,” she says. “They were so heavy, and I remember thinking that they were dragging me down. I thought I remembered kicking them off my feet. Apparently not.”

Then the family dog waltzed in—a “sweet, fluffy goldendoodle, I think,” says Janelle, who commented: “Aww, what a cute pup.”

“Don’t you remember her?” asked one of the family. “That’s Dixie. She was on the boat with us when we found you.”

Janelle couldn’t believe what she’d heard.   

“I swear the proverbial record scratched and skidded to a stop,” she says. “Dixie Rose was my mom’s DJ name when she was a radio DJ all those years ago. It was undeniable that my mom showed up. Dixie was there, all right.”

The Power of Hindsight

At sunrise, Janelle and J. reached out to an acquaintance with a boat to help them scan the shoreline, hoping they might find some of her lost belongings. After failing to find anything, they arranged to meet Wright that afternoon to retrieve Janelle’s kayak, which the family had also rescued the night before.

“Upon opening that sealed well (in the kayak), we all broke into tears,” says Janelle.

There in front of them were all the items she had packed in the kayak and thought she lost—purse, keys, even her phone. 

After making certain that the weather conditions were favorable, Janelle Hibler gets back out on Tahoe after the 2017 incident, courtesy photo

“I would have sworn under oath that I had thrown it all astray, that my phone was not with me,” says Janelle. “I dug for it when I wanted to make a 911 call. Alas, it was with me the whole time.”

Janelle soon made another discovery: The old, faded, tattered life vest she was gifted the day before had a whistle strapped to its chest.   

“All those hours out on the water, clinging to my kayak and my very life, I had my phone and a whistle the whole time,” she says. 

Fortunately, a full moon lit up Lake Tahoe that night, lulling a visiting family out for an ill-advised nighttime boat ride.    

“We didn’t make a great decision going out on the boat that night,” says Wright, “but we went directly to Janelle and had the supplies to get her temperature up and take care of her. We’re lucky it was a positive result and that her body responded well to the treatment we gave her.”

For nearly a decade, Janelle was reluctant to tell the story of her harrowing ordeal on Lake Tahoe. 

She’s well aware of the mistakes she made by not being properly prepared or educated, and that others will surely cast judgment. She knows now what she should have known then, and she wants to help educate others about the potential dangers of recreating on Lake Tahoe. It might just save a life. 

“If sharing this story helps even one person check the wind, wear the life vest, hug the shoreline, rethink that extra drink, or understand that conditions change quickly and predictably here, then the embarrassment of telling it is worth it.”

Now every July 8, Janelle celebrates being alive. 

Kayla Anderson is a 20-year North Lake Tahoe resident and watersports aficionado who has had her own harrowing experiences on Lake Tahoe. She is honored Janelle shared her story with her and hopes it encourages people to check the weather conditions every time they go out on the lake. Tahoe Quarterly Editor Sylas Wright contributed to this story.